In my last newsletter, I said that I’d be answering common questions about mobile web development over the next few weeks. I’m going to start with the fundamentals. Today’s newsletter answers the first of the top 5 questions I hear about HTML5.
Even if you have no idea what HTML is, read on. I just wrote a book called Beginning HTML5 and CSS3 for Dummies. If you don’t know what HTML5 and CSS3 are, who is better to explain it to you than the guy who wrote the Beginning book for Dummies?
Why should I care about HTML5?
Have you ever wondered why you can’t use an iPhone app on an Android phone, or why you can’t use a Mac program on Windows? Are you tired of popup windows telling you that you need to download Flash or Java or another plugin to use a website? Does it drive you crazy when you have 20 apps on your smartphone that need to be updated? Do you wonder why web pages look and work differently on different computers and even with different web browsers?
HTML5 was designed to solve all of these problems.
HTML5 is a standard for applications (or “apps”) that are distributed via the web and that can run on any computer or phone with a web browser. This is very exciting to a lot of people, and it has the potential to greatly simplify and improve desktop and mobile computing.
Even if you don’t write apps or web pages and you don’t have any intention of ever doing so, HTML5 is already changing how you use computers. As an informed person and a savvy user of computers (and maybe even as someone whose job involves the web), you need to be informed about something that will have such a major impact.
Stay tuned for next week’s question: “OK. I’m interested. But, what is HTML5 exactly?”
Have a great day!